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RE: Prehistoric Environments



> From: owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu [mailto:owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
> Dinosaur George
>
> Are there any examples of modern locations that are a good representation of
> prehistoric environments?  We are looking to shoot some plate shots and hope
> to find some locations that would look similar to the Late Jurassic, Late
> Cretaceous, Oligocene and Pleistocene of North America.
>
You'll have to be more specific, because it wasn't as if all of North America 
had the same environment for all of the Late
Cretaceous, for instance.

I'm assuming that the "Late Jurassic" you are using is the Morrison Formation. 
That is the trickiest one overall. Walking With
Dinosaurs did very well with their Australasian localities for this, and those 
are probably the best bet. I can't think of a
Northern Hemisphere locality that has the right look.

As for the "Late Cretaceous": it depends on the fauna that you want to show. 
The Two Medicine is relatively upland, the Dinosaur
Park more lowland, the Horseshoe Canyon swampy, etc. A good overview of the 
Frenchman Formation, for instance, can be found at:
McIver, E.E. 2002. The paleoenvironment of Tyrannosaurus rex from southwestern 
Saskatchewan, Canada. Canadian Journal of Earth
Sciences 39:207-221.

For the Dinosaur Park Formation, check out Currie and Koppelhus 2005 volume 
from Indiana Univ. Press.

For the Hell Creek, there is a volume from the Geological Society of America 
published in 2002 (Special Paper 361) devoted to this
paleoenvironment.

And in general, I recommend contacting Kirk Johnson
(http://www.dmns.org/main/en/General/Science/ScientificExperts/Biographies/Johnson+Kirk.htm)
  and Scott Wing
(http://www.nmnh.si.edu/paleo/curator_cvs/wing.html) for information of late 
Mesozoic plants and environments.

As for the Oligocene: depends on which fauna you are doing!! I don't know the 
mid-Cenozoic record--or researchers--as well, so you'd
need to find out who is doing paleoenivornmental work on these faunas & floras.

Same for the Pleistocene. Are you looking for the mammoth steppe? The Rancho 
LaBrea fauna? The Southwest? The Southeast? The
Midwest? Interglacials? Glacials? You might want to check the "Prehistoric 
America" documentary series to see where they filmed
their sites.

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
        Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
        Mailing Address:
                Building 237, Room 1117
                College Park, MD  20742

http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796